The turkeys are stuffed, along with the economy. And as Santa stirs in his Lapland grotto, it behoves Obiter to enquire of some of the profession’s luminaries what they would like to see under the tree on Christmas morning. And also what their New Year’s resolutions might be, since the Gazette doesn’t appear again until 7 January.

Richard Miller, the Law Society’s legal aid manager (you have our sympathy Richard) would like Santa to deliver ‘a crystal on a pendulum, so I can hypnotise Alistair Darling into giving to legal aid for the benefit of banks’ victims one thousandth of the money he has given the banks’.

Mmm. The latest estimate of the banking bailout bill is £850bn, which comes to an extra £850m for beleaguered legal aid providers. Can St Nick possibly accommodate that amount of lolly in his sack? Not to worry – they’ll doubtless take a cheque.

And Miller’s New Year’s resolution? ‘To swear less. And I fully expect to be able to keep that resolution right up until I read the first communication of the year from the LSC.’

Cripes!

Carol Storer, director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, says her Christmas wish is ‘for Charlton Athletic to be promoted, but ticket and cup of tea prices not to go up [well she does work in legal aid], and for fewer consultations affecting legal aid practitioners.’ We have it on reliable authority, Carol, that Dominic Grieve’s very first act on taking the post of justice secretary will be to launch an urgent consultation on the number of consultations to which lawyers are asked to contribute.

Christine Kings, commercial director of Outer Temple chambers, wants Santa to bring her ‘a time machine so I can go back to the days before the government torpedoed legal aid’. And there is an ecological slant to her New Year’s resolution: ‘To get the bar signed up to 10:10 without them quibbling about the punctuation.’ Good luck on that one.

Incoming bar chairman Nick Green QC says he wants ‘to start as a pigeon, and not end up as a statue’. Obiter can’t think what he means.

Meanwhile, David McIntosh, chair of the City of London Law Society, has more elevated concerns on his mind: he’d like Santa to help ‘the SRA to deliver Nick Smedley’s Plan A in 2010’. That’s all very well, but it’s not going to look very tempting under the tree David. Wouldn’t you rather have a box of dates and a Terry’s chocolate orange? We know we would.

On that flippant note, we at Gazette Towers bid our loyal readers – yes, both of you – the compliments of the season. And may the road rise with you in 2010, as the Irish say.